Hand Tools

david weaverI think I've probably never measured the setback, I'm just speculating.

Not trying to be flippant on the cap iron below the sole thing, it's just a set that should never be used, even if you can physically struggle through it.

In the exceedingly rare case that you can't plane a piece of wood (which is usually the result of quartered wood that's been improperly dried or that just has a predisposition to being really weak/dry/crumbly in the earlywood), then you'd go to a scraper rather than projecting the cap below the sole of the plane (I think that would just crush that kind of wood, anyway, only to leave tearout as it broke away).

That is the important point that makes matching a cap iron to the iron profile on a flat-soled plane pointless - unless there are feeding problems, but that decision loop goes back to fixing the feeding problems. With modern planes, that's not really an issue, because the feeding problem doesn't occur on a stanley plane - it occurs in the wear on a wooden plane.